


the burning sun is setting (but you're even more dazzling)

by April (featherx)



Series: but in the end I will always come back to you [16]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 10:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/April
Summary: Beautiful things are meant to be shared, aren't they?





	

The afternoon is getting cold. Max draws her jacket around herself tighter, shivering and wondering why she’s even really _bothering_. After all, Junmyeon has a concert today, and after that the boys will all probably go out to celebrate or something, and Junmyeon might forget about her. But she can’t _help_ going out to their spot by the bluff, every time, just to see if he’ll come this time.

It’s probably stupid, but Max can’t help but just hope, day in and day out. It’s not like it’s ever really gotten her anywhere, but it’s just something she does and she doesn’t even know how to stop it anymore. She sighs, burying her hands in her jacket pockets and willing them to be warm. It’s awful, _awful_ cold, and the biting wind isn’t helping either.

She remembers, perhaps a bit too vividly, the first time they’d come here. It’d been a long day for the both of them, her first show and his first concert. They’d both been a sweating, smeared-make-up mess, but Max could remember feeling like she had been _glowing_ , that elation of having finished her first show, having performed onstage and coming out rewarded with applause. It had felt magical. It had felt like she could do anything.

But when the after-party with her other fellow actresses and production members had ended, she hadn’t gone home right away. Going home after such an experience like that would have felt too… normal. Honestly, up until this day she still doesn’t really know what her thought process had been at the time, but it had seemed like a good idea to wander around and eventually come across a bluff just a half-hour’s walk from her house, overlooking the beach and the setting sun.

And _that_ view had been even more magical – the sparkling waves were reflecting the glow, and the setting sun had cast oranges, pinks, reds, soft auburns and light violets onto the scene. It had felt like something straight out of a movie, like it was too picturesque, too utterly beautiful to be real.

But it _was_ real, and so had been the boy who’d sat down next to her. Max barely noticed, until the boy said, “Hi.”

Surprisingly enough, she’d only blinked a little in surprise. “Hi there.”

“Um…” The boy was sweating all over, his clothes rumpled, but there was a certain aura about him that made Max wonder if he was an actor, too. “It’s… This is the first time I’ve seen you here. Do you… come here a lot?”

Max laughed, because it seemed like the right thing to do at that time and because it was a typical pick-up line but it sounded so hopelessly innocent in the boy’s mouth. “Nope, just found this place today.” She looked out onto the sunset again, a golden rainbow all by itself. It was beautiful, that was true, but there was no point in having something beautiful without having someone to share it with.

The boy smiled back. “Well, it’s pretty, isn’t it?” He joined her, redirecting his gaze towards the view. “My favorite color’s gold,” he said, in such a solemn voice that it sounded more like a declaration of death, “because of this. When I’m tired, or sad, or… or anything, I’ll go here. And watching this just takes the sadness away.”

Max looked at him for a moment. “Did something happen? Are you sad?”

“I’m actually not.” A laugh. “I’m so happy I could burst. My friends and I performed a concert in front of our schoolmates and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. But when all the parties and stuff are over, I wanted to come here, and maybe take a bit of a break. Come back down to Earth after all the happiness so I don’t end up going overboard.” A small grin, as he returns Max’s gaze. “I’m Kim Junmyeon. It’s nice to meet you!”

Max lets the sentiment process in her head for a couple of seconds before she smiles back and shakes his hand. “Maxine Robinson. Call me Max. And I don’t have a favorite color just yet, but I’ll get back to you on that when I do.”

It’s been nearly three years since then. Max definitely knows her favorite color, and she’s had every opportunity to tell Junmyeon about it within the three years they’ve been coming here and talking and just _being_ with each other – but she hasn’t told him. Not yet. It’s probably the typical teenage girl thing, but even something so trivial as her favorite color feels like it needs its own special moment. The time Junmyeon had told her he liked gold had been special, and Max feels the irrational need to make it special for herself, too, when she tells him. Or maybe the special moment is for him – she certainly has no idea.

But her second show had passed, his second concert, her third show, his third concert… and now it was his sixth concert, while Max had just finished her sixth show a few weeks ago. And for some reason, even after all those nights they’d spent together, not saying anything, leaning on each other’s shoulders and just feeling the other next to them, she hadn’t said anything. It didn’t even necessarily have to be her favorite color. She hadn’t said a word about anything along the lines of, _I like you_ , _I love you_ , _do you like me back?_

Max doesn’t know if it’s for the best. She has honest to God no idea whether she should stay in the safe zone, where their friendship is at, or take the risk and either have a heart beat in time with hers or have her heart be smashed into little, tiny pieces. And it _hurts_ that she’ll never _know_ if Junmyeon likes her back, even the smallest, tiniest smidgen of that feeling, because she _knows_ she wants him, desperately and hopelessly, the most effortless love she’s ever felt for someone, effortless in the way that it’s there with her, every waking second, and often enough, sleeping second, too.

But she’d rather keep their friendship intact, their inexplicable bond, than have it become _weird_ because she couldn’t keep her mouth, and her heart, shut. It’s been three years, six shows and six concerts, nights spent watching the sunset and then staring at the moon, and shouldn’t it be only _normal_ her heart would start to grow to accommodate love for a new person? Shouldn’t it be only _normal_ that her feelings might just be returned?

And yet the possibility, the chance that Junmyeon _doesn’t_ like her back, and the aftermath of that possibility makes her whole body go numb, like her blood had stopped pumping, her heart had stopped beating, had stopped bothering. So she keeps quiet, smiles along, and pretends that she doesn’t feel herself collapse every time Junmyeon so much as looks at her, because she can’t have feelings that only she has. Emotions are beautiful but they’re just like the sunset she and Junmyeon both love – they’re beautiful when shared but they’re just another lonely, pathetic sight when they’re by themselves, lonesome, left behind on the shelf.

The soft _crunch_ of shoes on dirt barely registers in Max’s ears, but when she cranes her neck upwards, she smiles so wide she can feel her lips hurt from where the cold has bitten into them. “Junmyeon!”

“Max,” he returns, eyes sparkling as he sits beside her, shivering in his thick green coat. “I didn’t think you’d be out here. It’s way too cold.”

“Don’t worry, you’re here now. Much warmer,” she teases. It’s not late enough that the sun’s already set, and they spend a few seconds in silence, just watching the waves crash on the shore of the beach, the waning sunlight glow and burn like dying embers of a fire. “How was the concert?” She asks, after a while.

Junmyeon grins. “Great. I didn’t forget a single line – I mean, unless you count where I accidentally said _hearth_ as in the fireplace hearth, and not heart, as in here.” He jabs her chest gently, and Max shoves his arm in return, in some halfhearted attempt to hide her smile. “I guess I forgot my actual heart here,” he says, jokingly contemplative.

“Aw. I guess you’ve found it now.” She mockingly flutters her eyelashes at him and winks, which, of course, sends Junmyeon into bouts of laughter. That act sends everyone into bouts of laughter, some more hysterical than most, but she can’t blame them. Max ends up looking _really_ ugly doing that, especially since she hasn’t _quite_ caught on to the whole idea of winking just yet. “Hah! You fell for me just now, I know it.”

“Robinson, I fell for you the day we first met,” Junmyeon declares, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Max tries to scoff, and, of course, fails, because her heart hadn’t _quite_ been ready for something like that. Junmyeon doesn’t seem to notice, thankfully enough, and if he does, he does an admirable job of hiding it. “How about you? How was your day?”

“Mh…” Max sighs, and gestures for Junmyeon to come nearer, which he does so, a knowing smile on his face as she rests her head on his shoulder, absorbing his body heat the only way she knows how (snuggles). The exhaustion finally catches up to her, and coupled with the warmth finally overcoming the freezing temperature, she’s only too ready to fall asleep right then and there. Obviously enough, she refrains from doing so, if only because that would probably end up with them spending the night on the bluff. “Tired.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Junmyeon shifts a little and gets himself comfortable without moving Max too much. Max sighs in contentment. It’s almost like their bodies fit perfectly with one another. “Something wrong? Did you get in a fight?”

“Just tired. Rehearsals were brutal today.” She yawns, tries to cover the yawn, and fails. She figures it’s not much of a big deal if it seems impolite or unladylike, considering Junmyeon has caught her beating cockroaches in the mud with a stick instead of using bug spray like normal people. “And I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to my friends. I needed this.” Max grips onto his coat sleeve, and hopes it doesn’t come across as too desperate, too obvious how much she doesn’t just need _this_ but also _him_.

Junmyeon ‘hmm’s and reaches around her to drape an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in nearer until they’re practically cheek to cheek. Max suppresses a way-too-girly giggle and settles for hiding a blush instead, since if she fails that, too, she can always blame it on the cold. Then they’re quiet again, watching the sun go down, slowly but surely, the vibrant hues coloring the sky. It’s a scene straight out of a musical, Max realizes, and this is usually the part where Jules – er, the guy kisses Alyssa – _er_ , the girl.

Will something like that happen in the mess she calls a love life? Probably not, Max thinks bitterly, but with her mind slowly going to sleep, she figures she might as well give herself a wake-up call. “Hey, Myeoni.”

“Yeah?” His hand is playing with her hair just the way she likes it, and Max _swears_ she’s going to go insane if Junmyeon keeps playing innocent like this.

“Just…” She pauses, not really knowing how the words are going to come out. “I like… the sunset.”

Wow, she tells herself, great start, Max. Really setting the literal scene here.

Junmyeon’s body vibrates as he laughs softly. “I have known that for three years. Anything else?”

“So – So my favorite color is orange.”

A gracious silence. Max leans in closer, buries her head into his coat sleeve, and tries not to laugh at how utterly stupid the words sound. She’s been planning to tell him for three _freaking_ years, and then she goes and screws everything up again. The worst part is that she doesn’t even _know_ how she screwed up this time, just that the silence coming from him is almost as bad as the silence if Max had said something else, something more like, _I love you_.

But then Junmyeon says, “You know something else, Max?”

Max lifts her head, just slightly, and then nearly jerks away when she sees that Junmyeon’s face is way closer to hers than she had thought it would be. Right. She had certainly never planned for something like _this_ to happen, where every tiny cell of her self-control would be put to the test. “Um… what?”

Junmyeon smiles. It’s freaking angelic. “When we’re here, watching the sunset… the light gets into your eyes, and sometimes, it’s just—” He pauses, like he’s trying to gather the words, and then finally says, “Your eyes look golden. Just a few times, but the first time was enough for me to, you know, to realize…”

Max has to remind herself that breathing is, actually, important.

“To realize I might… not just want friendship between us. I—” He shakes his head, face flushed and voice trembling. “I’m sorry, just—”

“Shut up,” Max says, and leans in.

At first Junmyeon evidently has no idea what is going on, but then he smiles against her lips and kisses back, going from playing with her hair to tangling his hands in it, getting it messier than it already is. But Max doesn’t care, doesn’t care about anything other than this moment, this wonder right here in front of her, the idea that this _isn’t_ an idea anymore, no longer some desperate hope, some fantasy she can only dream of, because it’s _real_ and it’s _happening_ and her heart is bursting with emotions she can barely describe. And the best thing about it all is that she’s sharing these Goddamn emotions with someone else and that makes everything so, so much more beautiful than she could ever have hoped for.

When they separate, barely more than a couple centimeters away from each other’s faces, Junmyeon’s breaths are adorably erratic and Max feels like she’s just run a marathon. “Do you really…?” Junmyeon manages.

“I just screamed it, in your face, through my mouth,” Max says, tone matter-of-fact but not bothering to hide the huge, ear-to-ear grin on her face. Her lips are still tingling and she wants to do it again, and again, and again, until they might as well be rolling in the mud. “Kim Junmyeon. I want you too.”

“Oh, my God,” Junmyeon says softly, because he’s an absolute dunce and Max has fallen in love with this walking, talking block of cheese. But then she realizes that he’s _her_ block of cheese and she feels a giggle building up in her throat again. “Oh, my _God_ ,” Junmyeon says again.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Max says. “Let’s do that again.”

And this time, Junmyeon is the one who leans in. Nothing has ever felt more like magic than this moment, right here, against a setting sun.

**Author's Note:**

> :3c we're done! what a wild two weeks it's been. again, hope you liked it, and don't expect anything like this for another year or so. (now onto the next birthday gift...)


End file.
